


Drown Me Out

by explosionshark



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 17:17:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1122444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/explosionshark/pseuds/explosionshark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern AU. “Okay, but like, exactly how certain are you that he’s your dad anyway?” Ymir jabbed the tip of her socked foot into Christa’s side. “Because, I mean, you at least didn’t inherit his shit fashion sense. Or bigotry. And he’s way uglier than you.”<br/>Temporary Hiatus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Finally moving this over from tumblr, where I have the same username. Much love to tumblr user brappzannigan for beta work. Please leave some feedback if you have the time, it'd be much appreciated.

“…and as such, I will be temporarily stepping down from my position within the church, effective immediately, so I can begin to rebuild the trust with my family that I have so shamefully broken. Thank you.”

 

The room exploded in chatter, reporters shouting questions over one another as the man on the screen turned away from the podium and began to shepherd his family off stage.

 

“Mr. Reiss, several other women have stepped up with claims that they also carried on a sexual relationship with you. How will you address these accusations?”

 

“I’m afraid this concludes the statement from Pastor Reiss this evening,” a different man swept in from the side of the stage and spoke into the microphone on the podium. “Tomorrow, Walls of Faith church leadership will be convening another conference to discuss the state of the church…”

 

The camera cut away to a panel of well dressed pundits as they prepared to dissect every excruciating minutiae of the pastor’s personal life. Christa turned off the television before they could begin. Her neck felt hot, her chest felt tight, and for some reason her eyes burned like she almost wanted to cry.

 

“Man, did you see his _tie?_ He must be really devout or some shit, because it’s a miracle that a guy that dresses that poorly could get anyone to fuck him.”

 

Christa jumped, startled. Ymir had been so uncharacteristically quiet during the press conference that Christa had forgotten she’d been there. When the older girl’s words registered in her mind, she frowned.

 

“Can you not, right now?” she grumbled half-heartedly. Watching the press conference had been a bad idea. Her heart was beating too fast, and her skin felt too tight, and her stomach twisted unpleasantly the more she thought about the carefully blank faces of her father’s family as they stood dutifully behind him.

 

“Sorry,” Ymir mumbled. The couch shifted next to her and then Ymir’s legs were across her lap, their weight a comforting burden.

 

It had been hardest to look at his wife.

 

Christa had always imagined that it would be seeing his other children that would unnerve her most, but that hadn’t been the case. They were older than her, three boys and a girl. Three of them had stood with their own spouses and children, faces carefully neutral throughout the entire ordeal. Christa thought that having families of their own must have made it easier to cope.

 

His wife hadn’t had that particular luxury.

 

She was as beautiful and brittle looking, like a spun glass figurine. Lips pulled to a tight pink slash against her pale face. Her brown hair styled immaculately to fall across her shoulders just so, makeup meticulously applied, clothes regal and well-fitting. She was older than Christa’s mother — much older. But the lines that creased her face made her look elegant instead of frail. She looked like a woman that might have been proud once, a woman that might have loved her husband.

 

The pastor himself looked much the same as when Christa last saw him; a little grayer, a little more weary.

 

Seeing him speak so earnestly about how much he _regretted_ his _mistakes_ made her feel hot and sick.

 

“Okay, but like, exactly how certain are you that he’s your dad anyway?” Ymir jabbed the tip of her socked foot into Christa’s side. “Because, I mean, you at least didn’t inherit his shit fashion sense. Or bigotry. And he’s way uglier than you.”

 

“ _God,_ Ymir,” Christa sighed incredulously. She shoved Ymir’s legs off her lap and shot up from the couch, heading toward the kitchen.

 

“Hey, I’m serious,” Ymir called after her. “Your dad is basically an angry looking potato! And you’re like, three times hotter than your mom, so biologically speaking it doesn’t make sense. You should be at a hotness deficit. Unless you’ve got some smokin’ grandparents tucked away somewhere that I haven’t seen photos of but-”

 

“You are _such_ a dick,” Christa complained, with no venom to match the harshness of her words. She felt Ymir’s hand on her shoulder and let herself be turned around.

 

“Look, I take it back, alright?” Ymir’s voice was low, sincere. “He looks more severely constipated than angry. A really, really fuckin’ backed up potato.”

 

Christa snorted, falling forward until her forehead rested on Ymir’s collar bone. She felt Ymir suck in a quick breath and tense up and wondered, briefly, if this was one of Ymir’s bad days, until she felt her friend’s hand come up to hover awkwardly above her shoulder before settling gently against her back.

 

“Hey,” Ymir whispered. “Wanna go get shitfaced?”

 

x.x.x.x

 

There was something Christa found weirdly soothing about lying on a bench in the park drinking beer and watching her best friend continuously fail at heel flips.

 

“Sonofabitch,” Ymir hissed around a cigarette, landing on the bottom of the deck again. She shuffled back and flipped the board over, a little wobbly from the alcohol.

 

It was the rhythmic nature of the thing, Christa decided, taking a long swallow from one of the 40s Ymir’s roommate had bought for them. Try, fail, repeat. And every time, the same reaction - Ymir would grumble a curse, or complain that her board was broken, and then she would do it again, like she expected something different to happen.

 

“ _Fuck,_ ” Ymir shouted as she fell back on her ass, skateboard scraping noisily away from her. Christa winced in sympathy as Ymir moaned and rolled over in the dirt, rubbing her tailbone pitifully.

 

“You okay?” she called out, feeling too lethargic to haul herself off of the bench to go see for herself.

 

“Nooo,” Ymir slurred. “I bit my fuckin’ cigarette in half.”

 

Or maybe the whole experience had less to do with the futility of human endeavor and more to do with the fact that drunk people shouldn’t be allowed on skateboards.

 

Ymir limped back to the bench and sat down gingerly on the ground in front of Christa, rolling her neck back until her ponytail just brushed Christa’s sweater.

 

“Hey,” Christa whispered, reaching over and tugging Ymir’s hair gently.

 

“Hey,” Ymir mumbled back, staring forlornly at the still burning, mangled cigarette between her fingers. Her palms were scraped raw and bloody, but she didn’t seem to notice.

 

“Jeez, Ymir, what’d you do to yourself?” Christa sighed, forcing herself into a sitting position and grabbing Ymir’s bicep. She pulled hard until Ymir sighed and dragged herself onto the bench too. “Put that down,” Christa ordered, flicking the cigarette away.

 

“Hey,” Ymir protested, voice cracking a little when Christa grabbed her wrists and pulled Ymir’s hands into her lap. “Those are expensive.”

 

“There are cheaper ways to kill yourself,” Christa pointed out, spreading open Ymir’s clenched fists to get a better look at the damage to her palms.

 

“Like booze?” Ymir nudged the bottle at their feet, making it scrape noisily across the concrete.

 

Christa blushed. “Shut up,” she ordered. “Or I won’t help you and your hands will get all gross and infected because you have horrible hygiene.”

 

“Whatever. Maybe they’ll get amputated and I’ll get rad replacements. Like, robot hands or lobster claws. _Then_ who’ll be the idiot?”

 

Christa smiled, despite herself. “Shush,” she whispered as she gently brushed the dirt and pebbles out of the shallow abrasions to the heel of Ymir’s palms.

 

Ymir had nice hands. As much as Ymir had nice anything, anyway. Big, strong, long-fingered and surprisingly dexterous. Her knuckles were knobby and a little crooked from the times she had broken them, fingertips calloused and rough in a way that was embarrassingly attractive. Ymir’s nails were always either bitten to jagged tips or caked black with some unidentifiable grossness. Her hands were warm and they looked nice tonight, in Christa’s lap, twitching just a little as Christa touched them.

 

She felt heat rise up the back of her neck as she realized she’d just spent several long moments staring silently at Ymir’s hands without doing anything. Christa glanced up slowly, brushing the last of the dirt away from Ymir’s bloody palms as she met her friend’s eyes.

 

“So, is your mom going to come forward?” Ymir blurted, utterly shattering the moment.

 

“What?” Christa asked, pulling her hands away.

 

“I, uh, heard the tabloids offer sweet cash deals for shit like that,” Ymir continued, fidgeting on the bench. “Y’know, for exclusives. This church scandal’s gonna be hot shit for a while, so…”

 

“Oh,” Christa swallowed hard against the sudden lump in her throat. “I have no idea, really.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Christa tucked a lock of hair nervously behind her ear. “I hope she doesn’t. I mean, I don’t think she will. She’s already been paid off, so, I mean, she probably won’t want to get involved.”

 

“They’re saying he had some other kids with his… anyway-”

 

It’s a little absurd that for all her bluntness and casual vulgarity that Ymir couldn’tt bring herself to say it.

 

“-like, would you want to meet them or something?”

 

Christa grabbed the 40 from the ground and drained it with a single long swallow, not caring that it had gone flat. She rolled the empty bottle between her palms and stared down at the peeling paint of the park bench, thinking about the expressionless line of blonde automatons standing sentinel at her father’s back.

 

“No,” she admitted, wincing at the feeble tone of her voice. She cleared her throat, and shook her head as if to dislodge her own self-doubt. “I’m tired. Let’s get out of here.”

 

x.x.x.x

 

Ymir was squatting at a punk house in the Trost. It was about as far away from Christa’s home in the gated community of Sina Heights as one could get, both literally and figuratively. Standing on the roof of Ymir’s place you could see the crumbled remains of buildings just at the edge of the old Shiganshina district — the only part of the city that had never been rebuilt after the horrific earthquake.

 

It was a bad neighborhood, but Christa honestly preferred it to Sina Heights. She didn’t dare say it aloud, it sounded like the kind of thought a privileged asshole might have. It was one thing to enjoy the “character” of a poor neighborhood when you had the luxury of a warm bed and a full belly whenever it suited you, it was something entirely different to be stuck in the Trost because wealth disparity had literally divided the city.

 

Still, the people here were honest in a way that Sina Heights residents couldn’t fathom, and it was a relief not to have to play the part of the debutante for a while.

 

She felt Ymir’s pinky brush against the side of her hand before it locked around her finger.

 

“You awake?” she asked pointlessly, breaking free of the pinky lock to grasp Ymir’s hand more completely.

 

It was a warm night and Ymir had a resting body temperature of, like, a thousand degrees but Christa inched slightly closer anyway. It felt nice to be close to someone.

 

She felt Ymir’s nod through the pillow they shared.

 

“Thanks,” she whispered. “For today.”

 

Silence filled the room for several long moments and Christa wondered if Ymir had fallen asleep.

 

“Shut up already,” Ymir whispered back, squeezing Christa’s hand affectionately before pulling away and rolling onto her side. “I’m trying to sleep.”

 

When Ymir’s breathing evened out, Christa eased against her back, pressing her forehead between Ymir’s shoulder blades. The sound of distant sirens carried her to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Oh, so now I need a reason to break into your house in the middle of the night? I though we were _friends."_

**2.**

Ymir was already waiting in front of the school when Christa’s student government meeting was finally over.

In a display of horrifyingly typical recklessness Ymir was puttering around the school parking lot on her longboard; the oversized, noise-cancelling headphones Christa had given her last year doing their job all too well, much to the consternation of the handful of drivers trying to escape from the parking lot.

Alarmed, Christa jogged across the parking lot, snatching Ymir by the hood of her filthy sweatshirt and yanking her to a stop. The taller girl lost her balance, falling off the board with a strangled yelp as the neck of the sweatshirt constricted around her throat, Christa’s firm grip the only thing keeping her from tumbling to the pavement.

“Jeez,” she rasped, rubbing her throat gently and casting a wounded look at Christa over her shoulder. “Why’d you do that?”

Christa rolled her eyes, wordlessly gesturing to the resumed flow of traffic behind them.

“Huh.”

“What are you even doing here?” Christa asked.

“You didn’t have your car this morning, so I came to give you a ride to work.”

“I don’t have a job.”

“A ride to _my_ work. Duh,” Ymir drawled, tone almost as condescending as the sharp quirk of her brow.

Christa sighed, running an exasperated hand through her hair. School had been excruciating. She’d spent the entire day tense and anxious, absurdly waiting for someone to confront her about her father’s scandal. Of course they didn’t - at least not knowingly. Walls of Faith had a large, passionate congregation throughout the city and the news of their beloved founder’s discretions had reached her school. She was used to hearing her father and his family brought up periodically, but that day every stray comment was like a punch to the gut.

She was exhausted. She wanted to go home and curl up in her bed with the shades drawn and bask in the silence until she was overcome by sleep.

But Ymir was here, right now, smirking like an asshole and offering her a hand up onto the longboard and Christa couldn’t find the strength to turn her down.

x.x.x

They had only done this twice before.

Both times it had been a big, confusing blur - over before Christa could really get a grasp of the situation, leaving them both sweaty and kind of exhilarated.

Christa swallowed nervously, leaning into Ymir’s body when the older girl’s hand settled firmly on her hip. Ymir’s confidence when they did this always took her by surprise, so at odds with her usual skittishness.

“Ymir,” Christa hissed through her teeth, voice quavering slightly.

“Take it easy,” Ymir rocked against her, voice a low rumble in her ear.

“I-I don’t know what to do with my hands,” Christa admitted, feeling the rush of butterflies filling her stomach.

“Your hands?” Ymir repeated. “Jesus, what does it matter? I’m doing all the work anyway.”

Despite this, Christa felt Ymir tentatively grasp her hand, pulling Christa’s arm down to her side.

“Thanks,” Christa whispered, feeling the tension in her muscles drain slightly with Ymir’s reassuring grip.

“Whatever,” Ymir muttered, knocking the top of Christa’s helmet with her chin.

With the terror fading to a dull roar in the back of Christa’s mind, it was easier to enjoy the moment. Hurtling rapidly through the streets on a sheet of plywood had its charms. There was something exciting in the scrape of urethane wheels on pavement, in the way the board hugged the concrete beneath them, in the feeling of the wind against her face.

It was easy, after today, to focus on the motion and let the rest of the world slip away. For at least a few minutes she could let go of her responsibilities, trusting that someone else would take care of things.

“You should let me teach you to skate for real. I taught Connie a few years ago and he only broke, like, two bones learning.”

And there was the tension again.

“You’re joking, right?” Christa asked, swallowing hard when Ymir shifted her weight on the back of the board to kick off again.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ymir assured her. “I mean, hairline fractures don’t even count, right?”

x.x.x

The dinner time rush at Burgerland was predictably intense, but that didn’t stop Ymir from shouting rude jokes to Connie across the room between orders or periodically hopping the counter to bring Christa fresh fries.

Christa had only been mildly surprised to find Sasha and Connie already waiting for them at the restaurant when they got there. At some point since Ymir had landed the job, it had become normal for their friends to show up in the middle of her shift for discounted food and unsupervised drink refills.

“Burgerland” and “relaxing” weren’t typically two concepts that Christa associated together, but she couldn’t deny the comfort she felt wedged sideways in the hard plastic booth watching two of her best friends do condiment shots off each other’s foreheads.

It felt good to be somewhere so uncomplicated, so completely removed from the ridiculous soap opera her life was becoming. The egregiously censored top 40 hits and commingling smells of cooking grease and industrial strength disinfectant were small prices to pay for the knowledge that at least behind the dayglo orange walls of Burgerland, she didn’t owe anything to anyone.

There was even a sort of serenity in trying to get Sasha and Connie to stop messing around and actually study. The time passed quickly and the trio was able to finish most of their homework by the time Ymir led them to the playground area to accompany her on her lunch.

“Hey, Connie, betcha can’t jump from the top of the slide and land in the ball pit,” Ymir challenged, shattering what had been ten whole minutes of uneventful bliss.

“God, Ymir, _don’t-”_ Christa started.

“BETCHA I CAN,” Connie shouted back, leaping out of his seat in outrage.

“Bet you can’t.”

“ _Can,_ ” Connie insisted.

Christa glanced warily at the top of the slide, “Jesus, Ymir, you’re going to kill him.”

“Can’t,” Ymir volleyed back, heedless of Christa’s protests.

“Show ‘er, Connie!” Sasha rattled her empty soda cup encouragingly.

“I will!” He affirmed, jogging to the bright, plastic jungle gym and scrambling up the tubular slide. “Sasha, play my jams!”

Sasha scrambled on top of the table, very nearly planting her foot on top of Ymir’s half eaten burger, “You’re the best! Around! Nothing’s gonna ever keep you down!”

“Oh, god,” Christa moaned, covering her face. “I can’t watch.”

“C’mon,” Ymir kicked her under the table. “It’s funny.”

Christa swung her foot back in retaliation, catching Ymir’s shin hard.

“Fuck!” Ymir shouted, dropping a handful of french fries in her lap. “You little shit!”

Christa was spared Ymir’s wrath (which, judging from past experience, was most likely to come in the form of a vicious wet willy) by Connie gracelessly flinging his body (his tiny, human body filled with breakable bones and burstable blood vessels and fragile organs and oh god why) from the top of the jungle gym.

Christa watched the freefall horrified, unable to turn away. Connie landed in a spectacular spray of colorful balls and a muffled curse. Sasha leapt off the table immediately and took off toward the ball pit, sliding smoothly through the mesh flap that served as an entrance and exit for people (typically children) without some sort of deathwish.

“Haaa,” Connie shouted, finally surfacing from the probably terrifyingly unsanitary ballpit. “Suck it, Ymir!”

“Dude, that was awesome!” Sasha screamed, launching herself into Connie, submerging them both in another technicolor spray of plastic.

Christa watched as her two friends wrestled, looking overjoyed and uncomplicated and beautiful.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” she risked a glance at Ymir from the corner of her eye, still wary of being punished for the shin kick she delivered moments ago.

Ymir shrugged, picking at her burger with careful disinterest.

“When do you think they’ll finally get it over with and get together?” Christa pushed, a nervous fluttering filling her stomach. All this talking in code was exhausting and a little painful, but there was no way around it with Ymir.

“They’re fine now, right?” Ymir asked, still not meeting Christa’s eyes. She shifted in her seat, glancing back at the door leading to the restaurant. “Why would they fuck that up?”

Christa bit her lip, feeling the butterflies in her gut turn to lead and drop. “Maybe they could be better than fine.”

Ymir dropped her burger onto the tray, standing up and brushing stray crumbs from the front of her uniform. “I gotta get back in there, my lunch is up.”

Christa watched her walk away and said nothing.

x.x.x

The house was empty.

She was used to it.

After Ymir’s lunch, she hadn’t been able to stick around. She felt like an idiot and a jerk and a victim all at the same time. She had been in this weird limbo with Ymir forever, and even though she knew Ymir had no designs on moving their relationship forward, it hadn’t stopped her from pushing the issue tonight. Just like it didn’t stop the way her breath caught in her throat when Ymir’s hand brushed hers when they walked. Like it didn’t stop the way her heart pounded harder every time Christa caught Ymir staring and the older girl tried to play it off by pretending Christa had something gross on her face. Like it didn’t stop Ymir’s face from swimming into her vision late at night, when she was alone and turned on with her hand edging just down the front of her-

Dammit.

_Goddammit._

Christa groaned, slumping against her bedroom door in frustration. The sudden realization that she was completely alone for the first time since the news of her father’s scandal broke made slammed into her all at once. With nothing and no one to hide behind, the emotional fatigue became like a physical presence - a lead weight against her sternum.

She didn’t cry, like she thought she might have.

It wasn’t sadness, exactly, or even numbness that she felt, but something more like an exhaustion so powerful it left her feeling hazy and disconnected from everything.

Blearily, she shuffled across the room to her bed, collapsing unceremoniously atop the covers.

Sleep came easily and was mercifully free of dreams.

x.x.x

It was the faint tugging on her lower extremities that roused her with surprising gentleness from the arms of sleep.

The muttered cursing she gradually became aware of was markedly less reassuring.

“Mommy?” Christa croaked, even as her mind dimly realized that she couldn’t have been correct.

Christa managed to peel her eyes open in time to see Ymir shiver exaggeratedly.

“Okay,” she grumbled, not looking up from where she was still struggling to remove Christa’s shoes. “We’re both just gonna pretend you never called me that…”

“What are you doing?” Christa yawned, jerking her feet away from Ymir’s fumbling hands.

“Quit it,” Ymir snapped, swatting Christa’s legs with the back of her hand and dragging Christa’s feet back toward her. “I’m trying to take care of you, you douche.”

“Jeez, just untie them.”

“I’ll untie _you.”_

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

Ymir dropped Christa’s ankles and fell to her knees next to the bed. She pressed her palms together in front of her face. “Please, god, tell me why? Why did you make my best friend a complete ass-monkey? Is this my punishment for all those hot chicks I’ve banged?”

Christa groaned, hoisting herself up to untie the laces of her sneakers before collapsing back onto the sheets. “You are an asshole. And such a liar, everyone knows you’re a big, stupid virgin.”

“No way, man,” Ymir protested, finally succeeding in removing Christa’s shoes. She tossed them unceremoniously over her shoulder before kicking off her own shoes and scrambling over Christa’s body to the other side of the bed. “I’ve done it _all_ the ways. On top, reverse-on-top-”

“-isn’t that just on bottom?”

“On a couch, froggy-style, interdimensional cowgirl, the ‘look-ma-no-hands’-”

“-gross.”

“-the Amish pretzel-”

“-okay, please, stop. _Seriously.”_

Even though it had been 100% fictitious and kind of all around gross, the combination of Ymir in her bed (after undressing her and yes, it was kind of pathetic, but it totally counted) and the mere notion of sex was enough to wipe all thoughts of sleep from Christa’s mind.

Ymir smelled like french fries and cigarette smoke. Her bare arm, lean and tan and dusted with freckles, brushed Christa’s shoulder when she shifted in the bed, mattress dipping as she readjusted her weight.

“What are you even doing here?” Christa asked, wincing at the huskiness of her voice. “Wait, did you pick the lock again?”

“Uh, about that,” Ymir muttered. “Look, some might say that what I did was, in fact, _breaking_ your lock-”

“-God-”

“-but _really_ I just appraised your home security. For free. And it sucks, your locks break hella easy, you should look into that.”

“Ymir-”

“Look, it’s cool, I shoved your fridge up against the door, no one’s gonna get robbed and homicided in their sleep tonight. _You’re welcome.”_

“Oh my god,” Christa laughed, smiling stupidly into the dark. She reached out instinctively, pressing a palm against Ymir’s side until a warm hand slid down to grasp her own. “Remind me just to get you a key or something.”

“Sure, whatever,” Ymir said, voice thick with sleep. “Take all the fun out of it.”

Christa settled back into the bed, trying to get comfortable again. It was hard to relax completely, Ymir’s avoidance of her earlier question gnawing at her in the silence.

“Ymir,” Christa whispered, nudging her friend with her elbow. “Ymir, hey.”

“Oh my Goood,” Ymir groaned, rolling away from Christa to plant her face in the bedspread. “Is there a word for a cockblock but, like, with sleep? Because that’s what you’re being right now. Some kind of… sleep… cockblock.”

Christa rolled over on her side, propping herself onto her shoulder. She planted a hand on Ymir’s shoulder, pushing until the girl rolled over to face her, back pressed against Christa’s wall, face suddenly about level with Christa’s chest.

Ymir stared openly for half a moment, opened her mouth to make a stupid comment, and promptly shut her eyes, yawning excessively.

“Why’d you come here?” Christa pushed, biting her lip, glad that the darkness hid the redness of her cheeks.

“Oh, so now I need a reason to break into your house in the middle of the night? I thought we were _friends.”_

“Ymir, really,” Christa rolled her eyes. “Are you here because you felt bad about our fight?”

“First of all, we didn’t _fight_. Second, no, you dick, I’m here because… you owe me money.”

“Owe you…? For what?”

“Gas money. Ten bucks. Pay up, Renz.”

“You don’t have a car.”

“Ohh, okay, so just because I don’t have a car I can’t collect gas money when I take you places. Alright, I get it. Pretty classist of you, Christa.”

_“Classist-”_

“The whole world is watching, the whole world is watching,” Ymir singsonged sleepily, disheveled and more infuriatingly attractive than anyone had the right to be at that time of night.

“Okay, fine, I’ll give you ten dollars. Jeez.”

“Thank you,” Ymir smirked. “Now kindly shut the fuck up. Us ninety-nine percenters need our sleep.”

“You are the worst human being imaginable,” Christa accused affectionately, letting her eyes slide shut at last.


End file.
